what is Domain certificate

Question

Hi

I could not find a link that describes Domain certificate, I am familiar with SSL certificates, and certificate authority but I don't know about Domain certificate.

and what is Multi-Domain certificate.

thanks

Answer 1

I Open IIS7 and tried to create a domain certificate, it seems just a certificate issued from CA.

Answer 2

From the description in some CAs (e.g. Comodo), a multi-domain certificate seems to be a certificate that can be used with multiple host names: this is done by putting multiple subject alternative name entries in the certificate. This is useful if your server has multiple hosts on the same IP address (but does not support server name indication (SNI) which is not widespread yet). In this case, only one certificate may be used for all the hosts sharing the same IP address (before HTTP has a chance to say to which particular host it wants to talk to), so this certificate has to be valid for all the hosts on that server (with same IP address and port).

That's not the same as a wildcard certificate, which contains a single name, but with a wildcard to represent a pattern in the name.

"Domain certificate" certainly depends on the context, but it could either be a "single domain" certificate (as opposed to a multi-domain certificate), or, in the context of Microsoft IIS:

[...] an internal certificate that does not have to be issued by an external certification authority (CA).